“Orihime, it’s starting.”
This is what 15 years of Bleach led to? A man addressing his wife like he’s giving traffic updates? No smile. No warmth. Just pure, unfiltered emotional bankruptcy.
Kubo really hit a creative wall here—hard. You can practically feel it in the panel. It's as if he stared at his script, shrugged, and said, “Screw it. Time skip. Make ‘em married, slap a kid in there—done.” It’s the artistic equivalent of handing in a group project you didn’t work on.
Ichigo doesn’t look married. He looks like he just finished reading a spreadsheet. Orihime looks like she’s trying to cosplay domestic bliss with a guy who clearly left his soul behind in Hueco Mundo.
Let’s be real: if this is supposed to be romance, Uryu should sue for emotional damages. Ichigo screamed his name with more passion while in a coma than he ever did when saying Orihime’s.
This isn’t a marriage. It’s a timeskip tax write-off. It’s a man who’s given up—not a man who’s won.
The whole thing reeks of those old tragedies where gay men, unable to live freely, settle into hollow marriages to maintain appearances and avoid exile. It’s not romantic. It’s survival through suppression. And it shows.
What’s saddest of all? I’m not even trying to ship Ichigo and Uryu. The difference in chemistry between them speaks volumes—and that's what’s most tragic about this 'canon couple.'
The surprise isn’t that Ichigo ends up in a hollow marriage—the surprise is that anyone thinks that’s aspirational.
This post really hits the mark on how tragic Ichigo and Orihime are as the official pairing. I, too, can’t help but wonder: How did Kubo think this would sell?
So yeah, Ichihime isn’t built on chemistry—it’s built on convenience. She’s not a partner; she’s a prize. And for a certain kind of fan, that’s all she needs to be.
Because Ichihime, for them, isn’t a love story—it’s a wish fulfillment script where the "ideal" woman rewards the passive protagonist just for existing. She's big-hearted, big-breasted, and blindly devoted. No development, no struggle—just validation in human form.
She’s not there to challenge him, grow with him, or connect at all. She’s there to confirm him. And for the fans who see themselves in him, that’s all they need.
But love isn’t about getting handed a trophy. It’s about meeting someone as an equal—and building something real. Ichihime skips that entirely.
So in the end, the silence from the stans when it comes to an argument like this? It says more than a thousand deflections ever could.
Because deep down, they know: She wasn’t his partner. She was his reward. And that’s not just an insult to Ichigo. It’s a disservice to Orihime—and a disappointment to the women who watched this story unfold and were told this was supposed to be enough.
